Percentage of Stage II or III rectal cancer patients who received radiation therapy before surgery, by patient age group – patients diagnosed from 2008 to 2011

Figure

Data Table

Data include AB, MB, NS, PE and NL (provinces that submitted comparable data for all four years).
Data include radiation therapy started up to 120 days prior to surgery.
Data source: Provincial cancer agencies.

Data include AB, MB, NS, PE and NL (provinces that submitted comparable data for all four years).
Data include radiation therapy started up to 120 days prior to surgery.
Data source: Provincial cancer agencies.

Data specifications

Radiation therapy capacity

Definition: Per capita linear accelerator availability

Numerator: Number of operational linear accelerators (available for radiation therapy) in province

Denominator: Total provincial population

Data source: Reported by provincial cancer agencies or equivalent to the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer. Population from Annual Population estimates for Canada, provinces and territories, accessed from Statistics Canada.

Measurement timeframe: 2012 calendar years

Stratification variables: Province

Provinces submitting data: AB, BC, MB, NB, NL, NS, ON, PE, QC, SK

General notes:

LINACS were pro-rated for partial availability.211-213

Radiation therapy utilization

Definition: Percentage of cancer cases receiving radiation therapy within 2 years of diagnosis

Numerator: Total number of cancer incident cases diagnosed in 2010 who have received radiation therapy within two years of diagnosis.

Numerator inclusions: All cases who have received radiation therapy regardless of treatment intent. Radiation therapy was not limited to the primary tumour site.

Data source: Reported by provincial cancer agencies or equivalent to the Canadian Partnership Against Cancer

Measurement timeframe: 2010 diagnosis years

Stratification variables: Province

Provinces submitting data: MB, NS, SK, NB, AB, NL, BC, PE

Province specific notes:

AB: If the Alberta Cancer Registry is notified of out of province treatment to provincial residents or it is mentioned in the documents, it will be coded and included. Data include both External Beam and Brachytherapy. Treatment information is based on initial and post-initial treatments in the ACR and EMR. And it includes all initially planned RT (ACR) and post-initial RT, including radiation therapy for metastasis, progression of a palliative intent (EMR). Data exclude radiation theraphy associated to another primary tumour coded on the ACR.BC: Majority of radiation therapy to sites other than the primary tumour site are excluded but there may be a few cases that can’t be excluded without having to go through all the data manually.PE: Out of province data are not excluded but the numbers would be so small that it is likely not relevant.

General notes:

Treatments associated with brachytherapy treatment are included.

The “incident case” is at the patient/ primary disease level as per Canadian Cancer Registry. The same person with 2 separate primaries would be treated as 2 incident cases (within applicable CCR/NAACCR rulesviii).

Cases for patients under 18 years of age (at diagnosis) were excluded.